The most significant difference would have been Lewis Hamilton finishing third instead of Mark Webber.

The latest change of points system makes it harder to compare this season with others.

For example, Vettel scored more points than any other driver ever – but with a win worth 2.5 times what it was last year, that was almost inevitably going to happen.

Had the current points system been used in every world championship since 1950, 14 previous champions would have out-scored Vettel:

Year

Driver

Points*

2002

Michael Schumacher

380

2004

Michael Schumacher

367

2001

Michael Schumacher

327

2005

Fernando Alonso

322

2006

Fernando Alonso

321

2000

Michael Schumacher

286

1992

Nigel Mansell

279

1988

Ayrton Senna

275

1991

Ayrton Senna

274.5

2007

Kimi Raikkonen

272

1993

Alain Prost

271

1998

Mika Hakkinen

271

1995

Michael Schumacher

268

1996

Damon Hill

258

2010

Sebastian Vettel

256

*under 2010 system

This does not include any drivers who might have out-scored him without winning the championship.

Of course there were many more races this year than there were in previous seasons. So to get the full picture we need to take into account how many points each driver scored per race.

Here is that data, also adjusted to use the 2010 points system:

F1 champions' points per race under 2010 points system

(Half points races have been taken into account. Points for pole position and fastest lap have not. Where drivers scored points for ‘shared drives’ they have been given the full points score. See here for more information)

Clearly, Vettel scored fewer points per race than average compared to most other champions.

But don’t jump to the conclusion that this automatically makes him a ‘lesser’ champion. After all, he faced far stronger opposition than some other champions did, particularly those at the top end of the chart.

Drivers’ championship position

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/charts/2010drivercolours.csv

Bahrain

Australia

Malaysia

China

Spain

Monaco

Turkey

Canada

Europe

Britain

Germany

Hungary

Belgium

Italy

Singapore

Japan

Korea

Brazil

Abu Dhabi

Sebastian Vettel

4

7

2

5

3

1

5

5

3

4

3

3

3

5

4

2

4

3

1

Fernando Alonso

1

1

2

3

2

3

4

4

5

5

5

5

5

3

2

2

1

1

2

Mark Webber

8

10

8

8

4

1

1

3

4

3

3

1

2

1

1

1

2

2

3

Lewis Hamilton

3

4

6

3

6

6

3

1

1

1

1

2

1

2

3

4

3

4

4

Jenson Button

7

3

4

1

1

4

2

2

2

2

2

4

4

4

5

5

5

5

5

Felipe Massa

2

2

1

6

6

5

6

8

8

8

8

6

6

6

6

6

6

6

6

Nico Rosberg

5

5

4

2

5

8

8

6

7

6

6

7

8

7

7

7

8

7

7

Robert Kubica

11

6

7

7

8

6

6

7

6

7

7

8

7

8

8

8

7

8

8

Michael Schumacher

6

8

10

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

9

10

9

10

9

9

9

9

Rubens Barrichello

10

11

12

13

12

12

12

12

11

11

11

11

11

11

11

11

10

10

10

Adrian Sutil

11

12

9

9

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

10

9

10

9

10

10

10

10

Kamui Kobayashi

11

12

15

16

16

17

15

16

13

12

12

12

12

12

12

12

12

12

12

Vitaly Petrov

11

12

15

12

13

13

13

13

15

15

14

12

13

13

13

13

14

15

13

Nico Hulkenberg

11

12

14

15

15

15

15

16

17

17

17

15

15

14

14

14

15

13

14

Vitantonio Liuzzi

9

9

11

11

11

11

11

11

12

13

13

14

14

15

15

15

13

14

15

Sebastien Buemi

11

12

15

16

16

15

15

14

13

14

14

16

16

16

16

16

16

16

16

Pedro de la Rosa

11

12

15

16

16

17

18

18

18

18

18

17

17

17

17

17

17

17

17

Nick Heidfeld

11

12

15

16

16

17

18

18

18

18

18

19

19

19

19

18

17

17

17

Jaime Alguersuari

11

12

13

14

14

14

14

15

16

16

16

18

18

18

18

19

19

19

19

NB. Rank of points scored, does not include ‘count back’ results in the event of a tie.

I wonder if the ‘points per race’ statistic is points per race they participated in or points per all races of the season (oh god what a horrible sentence). I’m wondering because of Jochen Rindt, if he really scored “so little” points or if his stat dropped because .. well .. he died.

Thats what I thought .. but isn’t it kind of unfair to ‘penalize’ him for .. dying …
But I see why it was done, since a championship counts all races, not only those someone participates in. Nevertheless, that other statistic would be kind of interesting, as, something like 30 years ago it wasn’t uncommon for drivers to skip races.

This is exactly why the ‘best races’ rule was used initially. In the early days of the championship it was acknowledged many drivers couldn’t be at every round. Sometimes events might clash, or a driver/team was short cash needed to compete. It was especially difficult for the European drivers to do the Indy 500. So, this stops someone winning the championship just because they had enough money to do every event when their competitor didn’t.

Yeah that was a really interesting statistic, and just shows how much closer the competition was this year than any of the other championships in the last decade, although 2008 and 2009 are both a ways down the list as well.

Sadly I feel like this championship was only this close because of mistakes and not because of “awesomeness”. Lets face it, the RedBull should have blown everyone away, but they failed too many times in the beginning of the year. Vettel crashed twice all by himself. Webber crashed twice. Hamilton crashed once and had some technical problems but also a littlebit of luck (reprinamds, overtaking safetycar). Alonso ruinde his championship by crashing in Monaco and Spa and had some bad luck with Hamilton twice (somehow also his own fault if he gets tricked). Button was sometimes just too slow in qualifying and had bad luck in Monaco and Spa. Massa was just bad at many occasions.

Everything I mentioned above paints mainly a picture of failure, not of a fantastic championship. On the other hand there was some great stuff, good overtaking moves, tough battles, interesting weather conditions. But overall I’d say the championship was more lost by the others than won by the champion.

For the points per race graph, before ~1970/1960 when only the best 5 results / best 7 results / best ‘whatever’ results in a season counted, have you divided total points by 5, 7 or total no GP’s in that season in the calculations.

This is very lovely stuff. My only nit is that the tables with rankings should be inverted so the low number is high. And I really don’t get the race results table. It does not appear to show finishing position per race, Is it a running average finishing position?

The main tale is the reversed fortunes of Hamilton and Alonso in the 4th quarter of the season. Hamilton went from having strong hold on the title–he even could survive the Hungaroring disaster—to disappearing completely under a 3 solid waves of ill fortune. Alonso did the reverse, coming from a series of disasters to snatch an firm lead. Of course, both of them were on borrowed time, as the RB6 had the ability to exert sustained dominance at any time, whenever they pulled it togeter..

I was convinced post Spa that Hamilton would take the title, purely because RBR had by then established their inabilty to execute or to avoid mistakes. I didnt think RBR would pull it together. But for Hamilton the car never really recovered from its Silverstone-Hungary surgery; I think the car was worse. Maybe quicker in absolute terms, but even harder to set up and drive. (See Button’s flailing around in Korea and Brazil.)

Vettel’s title worthiness is difficult to work out. One the one hand, he had a whole crew of very good drivers to deal with in pretty good cars. On the other hand, those other guy’s cars only seemed pretty good because of how poorly he and the team executed. His numbers really should look like Schumacher’s in 2002 or at least Alonso’s. Schumacher had Hakkinen to deal with the Alonso had Schumacher, formidable foes, but it was just them.

I suppose Keith’s car performance work will answer this conundrum. I am predicting that it will show that the RB6 itself was as dominant as Schmacher’s greatest Ferraris and at least as good as Alonso’s championship Renaults.

For McLaren, if the car does turn out to be third-best, it will be of some historical interest that they led the WDC for 7 races and came very close to a WCC.

Because I have it in for Goss and Lowe so badly, I am also keen to see proof that the relative pace cratered after the car went under their knives at Silverstone.

I really think we should stop talking about reliability and speed like they aren’t linked. It’s easier to make a fast car if you skimp on reliability and vice versa. The key is to get the balance right. Because good cars are on such a knife edge with reliability drivers can’t just drive the wheels off them all the time â€“ a driver needs to manage their machinery.

Reliability is not luck, but rather an aspect of design and the result of careful management. Others were better on that front but not as quick in raw pace terms. This year, in the end, Vettel and Newey managed the best combination of all aspects of performance. It was a closely run thing, but we shouldn’t imagine simply that Vettel and RBR were unlucky not to wrap the championship up earlier.

You’ve completely missed what the guy is saying. If Adrian Newey had diverted a bit more of his attention to reliability rather than pure pace, the speed differential would be cut by several tenths, and the RB6 would be a lot more robust.

And I think what Calum is saying is that the evidence that speed and reliability, in the modern era, are inversely related is thin.

Granted, if Newey only has 15 hours a day to work, he can only focus on so many things, but it’s not necessarily the case that every new development creates a reliability issue, or that a performance development also does not make the car less reliable. After all, adding more fins and ripples to the splitter doesnt affect reliability at all.

For the RedBull cars, I think this is a special case. Newey apparently has a way of working in which he disregards reliability at first, and then works it in later. But sometimes it doesn’t work out at all. See the MP4-18/19. His Leyton House Marches were promising and innovative cars, but desperately fragile—and they never got to the front. Not everything he touches turns to gold. And dont forget it took many years of mediocre RedBull cars, that were also very unreliable, to get to the RB6.

Chronic unreliability is a basic tradeoff of his approach. Maybe its a result of his unusually conceptual approach, where he just draws stuff with pencils, and sees if it works. From what I understand, he sits in the CAD room at a separate desk with his #2s and paper and does his thing, and carries our a notebook in the paddock doodling.

Considering how Hamilton would have been only three points down on Vettel in Abu Dhabi, last year’s points could have meant an even tighter season finale. The top four drivers would have entered the race with the following amount of points:

Alonso – 99
Webber – 96
Vettel – 94
Hamilton – 93

Hamilton would have entered the race with only a third-place deficit to Alonso rather than a victory-deficit…

Michael as runner-up scored more points than any of the champions thereafter.
I think this means either of 3 things, one, the competitors are making too many mistakes, two, the cars are far more closer in performance, three, Alonso and Michael were truly sensational in 2006.

Look at those champions with low average points per race (2 seasons of Piquet winning it, Keke Rosbergs championship, …), those are years where we had an intense fight between several drivers and teams getting into the points. Just like we had this year.

Yes, all three. But it’s a lot easier to make mistakes when you have to push like hell at all times and battle for position with a gaggle of other good drivers for the champioship. That is a real difference of 2010 versus 2008 going back to 2002. Quite a lot of Schmacher’s and Alonso’s races were done by half-way. But you can’t take away from Schumcher that he made very few driving errors in his day.

Also, the Ferraris of Schumacher’s long WDC run were very reliable. I think he went more than three years without a mechanical at one point.

Just looking through Wikipedia it looks like you’re right. Schumacher had no retirements in ’02 and one each in ’03 and ’04 each caused by crashes due to small errors he made, so for 3 seasons in a row he had no mechanical retirements.

Hi Keith … I went back to Part 1 to make sure that I had full view of all your charts – which I do. But in Part 2, the only chart I can see is the “F1 champions’ points per race under 2010 points system”. Are there any settings required that I need to adjust on my browser? I have Microsoft’s 64-bit browser – beta version and Office 2007 Professional. Thank you and regards!

What I hope 2010 has shown, is that to win the team title, both drivers have to be close to the front.
Which means team orders are by default a bad thing as usually a designated #2 driver drives like a division two driver.

Statistics, lies and statistics.
It is possible to gather the statistics to prove any point – the facts are; as much as I don`t like it/him – Vettel is 2010 WDC. Similarly Button in 2009.
Statistically speaking it is 2011 that will count.
Will he follow the many 1 winner wonders???

I really like the new charts, but saw nothing wrong with the old ones. Are they staying for future race analyses? Also, there appears to be no way of making these new ones full-screen, so even with only 5 drivers selected it’s hard to read a lot of them. But good work nonetheless :)

To add to the stats, Lewis Hamilton was the only driver this year to have had all his points come from the first 6 finishing positions. Vettel had one 7th, Alonso a 7th and 8th, Webber three 8ths and a 9th and Button a 7th and two 8ths.

I think it’s interesting that in the end the previous system came out as giving a closer championship then the new one. I think we would have lost Button earlier, but to be honest his “chance” of the championship really was just a mathematical oddity.

The new charts are better in few aspects but worse in 1 big aspect – they can’t be zoomed into. Keith, race-charts for races like the Korean GP this year were impossible to read without zooming in lap 4 onwards.

Looking at the chart at Silverstone, then Brazil, points out to me why Fernando Alonso was amazing this year. Also, looking at Massa’s stats shows just how much Alonso drove the wheels off his Ferrari just to keep up with Red Bull and McLaren. Yes, Vettel is the WDC, but for me DOTY is Alonso, without doubt